How Video Games LIE To You

Ah,

video

games

, is there a better way to waste an afternoon? I say no, as long as they aren't blatantly lying to me. That's, wait, what's right. Your favorite

video

games

literally trick you all the time, from stats that mean absolutely nothing to hidden features from the developers. I don't want you to know, these are some of the craziest ways video games lie to you. You need more speed. Every video game has what we call mechanics, whether they are as simple as reloading a weapon or as complex as building a base. All of these features are mechanical at times, however games present us with a mechanic that doesn't actually do anything at all and you don't even realize that speed boosts are needed in some games, like the original Mass Effect sprint, which literally does nothing if you When you're in combat, sure it works fine, but if you're traversing the world, pressing the dash button doesn't affect your speed at all, it just zooms in on the camera and changes your character animation to give the impression that you are moving faster.

There is actually no difference in the speed of these two videos. This strange decision was probably due to technical limitations. The hardware that the game launched on in 2007 was not as powerful as today, so the developers had to force the player to move slowly in order to do so. Give the game time to load, but this fake mechanic is not limited to third-person shooters. Many racing games have a boost or Nitro button that is supposed to give your car an incredible speed boost to help you overtake your rivals; however, in titles like Need for Speed. the Boost barely increases your speed, there's a lot of intense visuals, and the field of view gets closer to the car, making it look like you're going at the speed of sound, but you guessed it, in reality, the change is minimal. frankly nonexistent, it's all just smoke and rearview mirrors.

Mind games, some particularly psychological games. Horrors excel at screwing with a player's mind. Eternal darkness, the regime of sanity, thrives in it. This 2002 GameCube horror title follows several characters in different time periods as they face off against ancient Lovecraftians. The evils so far are standard, but where the game really stands out is in its sanity mechanic, the more enemies damage your character, the more their sanity meter will deteriorate, causing increasingly strange and disconcerting things to happen. , including the game that blatantly lies to you to get you to mess with them. your head likes to trigger a fake blue screen error message to appear and if you think that sounds like panic, it gets worse if you're doing particularly badly, the game will pretend to delete all your saved data right before your eyes, oh man, that's the real horror right there, this isn't really happening, seriously, imagine not realizing this was part of the game, some players literally went to unplug their consoles before their data could be deleted and the lies don't end There, the devious developers behind Eternal Darkness also incorporated. functions where the game pretends to lower the volume of your TV's switch inputs or even turn off the screen completely with all this going on, it would be hard not to feel at least a little nervous after all, there's nothing worse than feeling like The horror is spreading beyond your device and into your home at least until, just kidding.

I'm not going anywhere if you want to keep your sanity meter healthy, although I recommend you go and hit the like and subscribe buttons that way you'll never miss it. In mind-blowing videos like this one, well, going back to the hoax we just did, is there anything scarier than a red health bar? No, there isn't, but there's no better feeling than surviving a biting encounter with just a bit of life left. true, this is something game developers know and that's why they lie to you about it. Yes, many times developers make the last small fraction of a health bar worth more HP than the rest, so when you think you only got 10%. of your remaining health, it could actually be around 40% in games like Doom Eternal and Assassin's Creed Origins which do this specifically to increase focus and give you more barely achieved moments, damn that's cool I guess but it makes me wonder at each level.

I have completed in a similar vein other games such as System Shock from 1994, they give the last bullet in your magazine double damage, this makes it more likely that you will get a desperate death at the last moment, increasing the drama and is the spiritual successor 2017, Bioshock. It absolutely makes you invulnerable for a couple of seconds when your health drops low enough. Wait, I'm bad at video games after all? I need to go to bed. Problems with the stopwatch. I don't perform well under pressure. If the stopwatch runs. I start to sweat especially. When the timer seems to go suspiciously fast, when playing Mario you notice that the timer goes from 90 to 30 in what seems like half the time.

No, you're not losing it. Mario's seconds are faster. The exact time differs from game to game. but one second of Mario usually only lasts about 6 real seconds, no wonder I panic so much, but why is that? It's probably partly to stress out gamers like me, but it could also just be a technical quirk, seeing the original NES console that was the first Mario. released the couldn't keep time in seconds, so the game used a shorter time measurement and just got stuck. I'm still not convinced, although I think Mario's creator, Sharo Mamoto, just wanted to make us suffer while he laughed in our faces.

Pocket Monster. Unfortunately, everyone has heard of Pokémon, but did you know that despite their incredible popularity, the red and green of the original 1996 Pokémon games literally lie to your face? Yes, back then developer Game Freak was a small studio that had a nightmarish time trying to fit all the data into that. small Game Boy cartridge because of this the first games shipped with a ton of bugs and broken mechanics the battle system proved especially difficult for the team to understand after years of tinkering it was just finished on time and finished it's an exaggeration some moves they just don't They don't do what they say it concentrates energy, it's supposed to increase your Monster's critical hit rate allowing them to hit harder but it actually cuts it off dramatically, plus psychic type Pokémon were supposed to be weak to moves ghost, but instead they are completely immune.

For them, as you can imagine, this is quite infuriating when you are trying to win a battle tactically, but the battle system is not the only fiber that was originally released in Japan in 1998, the first Pokémon games were published in the rest of the world. As the updated red and blue versions and these new versions had their own problems, in particular the children who changed their Raichu to a type on Cabar Island were surprised to read that their Pokémon had evolved, because Raichu cannot evolve, the game I was completely lying. So what happened this time?

Well, in the original Japanese game, this exchange required the player to send a Kadabra which would then evolve into the alaka exam. In the remake, they changed the required monster to a Raichu, but not the text shown after it, making it seem like it. like Raichu evolved when I haven't seen it that's why I have trust issues don't look behind you if you like horror games you've probably heard of the tragically canceled Silent Hill reboot from Silent Hills AO kima , well, it's a playable trailer from 2014 PT is widely considered one of the scariest games ever made and harbors a chilling secret that most people don't know about.

The game itself is pretty simple, you walk through spooky hallways exploring and solving puzzles while a scary ghost named Lisa stalks you at times. You will hear sobbing and ragged breathing coming from behind you. Top tip, don't turn around if you taunt Str spells. The thing is that even when Lisa doesn't make any noise, many players still feel like they're being watched like everyone else. It's time to get to the bottom of this, a hacker named Lance McDonald reviewed the game's code and discovered that something super creepy happens as soon as you grab the flashlight at the start of the game.

Lisa secretly ATT attaches herself to your back locking the camera in one position McDonald captured this in all her creepy glory, she is literally always breathing down your neck you just don't realize ooh this allowed the developers to replicate the strange feeling of being observed and increase the fear factor without keeping the player the wiser, unfortunately for masochists, the teaser was removed from the PlayStation Store when Silent Hills was cancelled. However, I would like to sleep tonight, so it's okay for me, Danger Man, after all that horror, I need to relax. How are you? An adorable anime game from 2017, Doy DOI Literature Club, is presented as a cute dating sim that allows the player to romance one of four anime girls only when you start the game for the first time, it displays this ominous warning. which seems totally out of place, well it's no, despite the cute exterior, I give DOI is actually a very disturbing psychological horror game that uses a dating Sim as a skin suit, if you don't want any of it to be ruined the plots, I would skip the step now because it really is something that is best experienced yourself.

The basic gist involves one of the girls becoming self-aware and falling in love with the player, not the Avatar, but you in the real world. She then breaks the fourth wall and uses the game's code to influence and torment the other girls in hopes of making them unpleasant. I'm sure the game gives you a little non-specific warning about what's to come, but nothing can prepare you for when it goes completely off the rails. I can't go into detail here without risking being demonetized, which should tell you everything you need. Know and say it this way if you are looking for a game that gives you confusion, this is not living on the edge.

Platform games like Mario or Rayman are all about control, they need to feel steady and responsive or you. You'll get frustrated quickly, but to achieve this, the developers have some really clever tricks up their sleeve. The most impressive platforms you're running on are much longer than they look. In almost every good platformer, you get a few extra frames to jump around. after running off a ledge, this mechanic is known as coyote time after the Looney Tunes character, while E coyote, you know he would run off a cliff and remain suspended in the air for a few seconds before falling to the ground and you could To think that this trick would make all platformers feel too easy, but the reality is that it makes them feel normal.

Most people don't have lightning fast reaction times and need those few extra frames to time the jump correctly. In fact, any time a platformer doesn't include coyote time it's painful. 2017's notable remastered Crash Bandicoot Insane Trilogy drastically reduced the amount of coyote time it allowed players compared to the original trilogy and people had issues with it, so this is a help I'm more than happy to get better than Ridley Scott's Alien movies gave me nightmares. For years, even today, I still can't eat eggs in case something jumps out of them, so imagine my horror when Alien Isolation launched in 2014 and brought the experience of being relentlessly pursued by an unstoppable xenomorph to the realm of video games, naturally, I just had to do it.

Play, the brutal beast is always present in the game, it learns and adapts depending on how you play, but as I played I kept feeling like it was getting too close for my comfort even though I hadn't made any noise to alert it. There's more going on than the developers initially claimed: the xenomorph actually has two AI brains, the main one controlling the monster and learning from your behavior as it tries to hunt you. The second brain known as the Director is the one you are not. You're not supposed to know about this brain, it always knows exactly where you're hiding and occasionally provides clues to the main alien AI, if you're doing too well, say what doesn't seem fair, yeah, and that's not all, the xenomorph also literally has eyes. the back of his head so he can tell if you get too close behind him, geez, there are all kinds of processes like this creating the illusion of a sophisticated alien intelligence when in reality it's some kind of trap that you can't deny. the effectiveness of it, although I had to buy a whole new drawer of underwear after completing this set.

Liarsblatantly, it should be pretty clear by now that game developers don't shy away from misleading players, but they often do it quite subtly, not in the case of Telltale, if you've ever played one of their games, you'll know that Every time you make any kind of decision, there is a chance that a message will appear saying that a particular character will remember it, which is supposed to add weight to your choice. and they make you fear any possible consequences of the plot the reality is that there are often no consequences the plot remains unchanged and the character in question reacts in the same way as if you had made a different decision the message is purely superficial which is scandalous Considering the point of their game is poor choices and consequences, this is still far from the most egregious offense.

The high-octane racing game from 1995 has one of the most blatant lies in video game history, as with most racers, the player can choose from several different cars. each with different stats, you know, speed, acceleration, all that, just in the case of high octane, these statistics are astronomical lies, in reality, none of the vehicles have any noticeable differences, they all work exactly the same, that goes beyond to illuminate your players lazily because you can't. bothering to implement real changes is a pretty disgusting practice, having said that not all blatant falsehoods are bad. The 2017 Hellblade Senua Sacrifice follows the titular lady as she goes on a journey to save the soul of her deceased lover at the beginning of the game.

It is told that a dark rot will spread on Senua's arm every time she responds and if it reaches her head, all your progress will be lost, yes, a constant death system that is difficult but is also a complete fabrication, no matter how many times the player fails, the rot will never reach Senua's head, so why say it? Well, one of the main themes of the game is fear and paranoia, particularly the fear of death. To instill this fear in the player, the developers added the perade message, but they didn't really want you to lose all your progress and potentially quit the game, so they didn't actually implement the mechanic, the message alone is enough to make you Every second of the game is much more intense.

Damn, have you played Hellblade? If so, did the perade death lie affect your experience? Let me know in the comments. When you're doing really well in a game like Mario Kart, your AI opponents suddenly seem to speed up and start hitting you with everything they've got. Well, it's not just in your head, some competitive games have a controversial built-in mechanic called rubber. Basically, the better you do in the game, the harder the AI ​​will become to keep you challenging in Mario Kart. This means that your opponents' overall speed will increase if you are too far ahead of the rest, evening the odds.

On the contrary, if you are doing it wrong, its speed decreases and you have a better chance of getting good power-ups. It is designed to prevent players from getting too frustrated if they are losing and to keep the game interesting if they are winning, but it has been heavily criticized by some people who find that rubber bands often make them feel like nothing you do in the game. game will really matter if you get punished for doing it right, what's the point? and if you pull a victory from the jaws of defeat, can you really be proud to know that the game?

I've basically handed it over to you now that you finally understand why I always stay firmly in the last hero or villain spot. Everyone loves a twist. Nothing beats a plot reveal that can make you reevaluate everything you thought you knew about a story, but what if that twist? calls into question all your own actions 2008's indie Darling Braid presents exactly that scenario in this charming platformer where you play as a character named Tim searching for a princess who has been kidnapped by a horrible, evil monster seems simple enough until the player reaches the end. The world seen in Braid has a strange time reversal mechanic and the last level actually takes place first in the story timeline when you start the final level.

Tim follows the princess and works with her to try to stop an evil knight from pursuing her only after arriving. At her house, the level is played in reverse and it is revealed that Tim was the evil monster that the princess had been running from the entire time she was running to the Knight for help, she was not running from him. Damn, I know I said I love a Twist, but it's not fun. realizing you were always the bad guy imagine ending Mario and finding out that Big M was actually a sadistic monster trying to kidnap Peach, yeah there would be a whole generation of traumatized kids, sorry not sorry, different perspective.

First-person shooters are one of the most popular game genres, is there anything more immersive than fighting a battle through the eyes of a soldier? Probably not just as long as you don't look too closely and that's because you're not just seeing through the eyes of the soldier you're shooting at. through them also wait what not, I hear you say, you can clearly see the bullets coming out of the gun. That's what they want you to think. Have you ever noticed another player dropping you from behind a box or something when only his head was visible? It's infuriating.

It is impossible if they had actually fired his gun. It's really difficult to program bullets that emerge from the barrel of a gun and line up precisely with a crosshair in the middle of the screen. Typically the bullets will hit a little off center and the player would have to compensate for this by repeatedly missing your enemies despite having them dead in your sights, doesn't sound fun so the most elegant solution is to have the bullets fire off center. invisible from the player's head towards the camera while they are visible. Bullets fire from the gun now, not all games do this, but the ones that don't are few, so next time you load up Call of Duty, just find the coziest hiding place you can and peek your laser eyes out of the death by the edge.

Later, a little help. There's nothing fun about losing. Something game developers know very well, which is why some will secretly make adjustments under the hood to lessen the blow of failure and keep you playing for as long as possible. Both Spyro the Dragon and Resident Evil 4 can. Dynamically reduces the challenge in its levels based on the player's performance, for example, if you end up failing many times at a certain point, the game can eliminate some of the enemies in the area you are fighting in without ever telling you in others . In games like Bioshock, developers go to great lengths to avoid frustration from the start.

Menacing big daddies have their running speed reduced when you're not looking at them to avoid confusing off-camera deaths. Additionally, enemies with ranged weapons will always miss their target. first shots to give the player a chance to react without being surprised, other Shooters like Spec Ops in the line also do the same and while it's not confirmed if bigger games like Call of Duty Harbor have the feature, I wouldn't be surprised at all , I mean it makes sense. No matter how good you are, getting shot in the back without warning will never be fun, but what about those players who just aren't good at some multiplayer games like Gears of War?

New players receive significant boosts to their stats for the first time. The developers realized that players who performed poorly in their first match were unlikely to play again, so they made it easier, but only for a while. . After a few matches, the playing field would level out similar to some games like modern Call. of Duty titles use a skill-based matchmaking system in their multiplayer mode. The idea is to match up players of similar skill that way players will likely get some kills and a more skilled player won't give them their asses. Unfortunately, this system also leads to more boring games.

If you get better at the game, you just get matched with better people, so it never feels like you're honing your skills. I miss the old Call of Duty. Fortunately, other developers have employed better tactics to create their games. funniest XCOM 2 of 2016 is a turn-based strategy game where soldiers fight aliens. Each attack you perform has an accuracy percentage. The higher the percentage, the better your chances of getting it right. The developers rightly realize that it's no fun to miss an attack with an 85% accuracy rate, so the game secretly increases the accuracy of these moves to 95%, it feels good and some Lego games use similar tricks in mass shootings, the game only allows a handful of enemies to reliably hit you with their projectiles, the rest are just there to make the scene feel more chaotic, they will still shoot at you but never hit you, it really makes you Think about whether you are playing or it is the game that is playing you.

See, I love open world games, but what if I told you? That mountain that you can see in the distance completely ceases to exist when you look in any other direction. Listen to me. Modern games can be large and it takes a lot of processing power to render game worlds in massive detail, forcing developers to create trixy. The solutions take 2017's Horizon Zero Dawn, a huge and innovatively beautiful open-world game for its time, so beautiful, in fact, that the developers couldn't render it at least not all at once, anyway, they used a little trick called frustrum crilling, as it might seem. like a horrible form of body modification, but it's actually a cool technique to represent Hefty Game Worlds.

The basic idea is that everything you look at is rendered completely, while everything outside your field division is not when you turn around to look in the other direction. New areas are quickly generated out of sight and old ones are removed, this saves your console from having to load the entire world at once, allowing for silky smooth performance without sacrificing graphics. Fidelity filters well, so yeah, in a lot of games, anything you can't see literally doesn't exist, the only thing behind you is a cold, uncaring void of computer code, jeez, way to kill the vibe. Having said that being able to walk away from someone and erase their existence would be quite useful in real life sometimes after all this.

Now we would like to officially introduce you to Jay and Wesley, we are the storytellers. You might be surprised, but we also know that you guys tend to have favorites for certain videos and topics, so are you Team Wesley or Team Jay? Please click Poll in the description to let me know, man, all this gaming talk made me want to lay down on the couch and turn on my console, maybe I'll stick with Tetris, that game can't lie to me though, can't I? which one of those devious ones? The hoaxes were the ones that surprised you the most, let me know in the comments below and thanks for watching.